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Friday, August 10, 2012

Interview With Sarah Newton, Part I

Today we begin something very special for readers of FATE SF: the first part of our feature interview with SF author and RPG designer Sarah Newton, the creator of the FATE-based RPG setting and novel Mindjammer!

This has been a big, big week for Sarah, with the launch of the Mindjammer Press and the re-launch of her transhuman SF novel Mindjammer in both print and electronic formats!

At the end of Part I of this interview, you'll discover all the details on how to contact Sarah, learn more about the Mindjammer universe, order the Mindjammer novel - and more!

Sarah Newton

Sarah is a writer of science-fiction and fantasy roleplaying games and
fiction, including the transhuman space opera novel "Mindjammer", and
the ENnie Award-winning RPG setting of the same name; the techno-fantasy RPG
setting “The Chronicles of Future Earth”; and the “Legends of Anglerre”
roleplaying game. She’s currently writing “Zero Point”, a series of globe-spanning
World War 2 adventures for the “Achtung! Cthulhu” RPG setting, published by
Modiphius; the “Great Game” campaign for the Steampunk “Leagues of Adventure”
RPG from Triple Ace Games; and “The Worm
Within”, the first “Chronicles of Future Earth” novel, to be published by
Chaosium, Inc, in 2013. She lives in a field in rural France, surrounded by
numerous farmyard animals.

FATE SF: Welcome to
FATE SF, Sarah! So, to get us started, what was your first gaming experience? What did you experience first as a player? What did you run as a GM?

SARAH: Thanks very much for having me, John! And thanks too
for maintaining FATE SF – this is a great site!

Art by Liz Danforth

My first gaming experience was way back in 1980, on the very
last day of my first year at high school. I guess I was about 11, maybe just
turned 12. It was “games day” – you got to take your toys and games to school
for the last day of the year – and one kid had a copy of the brand new Advanced
D&D Players Handbook – the softback edition. I remember seeing the dungeon
map on the back page and being absolutely mesmerized – I was already a fan of
Tolkien, John Carter, Earthsea, and so on, and the idea that you could actually
play a game set in those worlds just blew me away.

I went straight home
that day with a catalogue the kid gave me for “Games of Liverpool” and ordered
“Buffalo Castle”, the solitaire dungeon for Tunnels and Trolls. I had no idea
you needed a separate rulesbook to play it, so when it came I just kinda made
up my own rules. I played the heck out of that little pink booklet! Then
I went on to try writing a couple of my own, using my dad’s “Brother”
typewriter. It was only when I went back to school in the fall I realized you
could also play RPGs with other people! I picked up Metamorphosis Alpha,
Traveller, and eventually white box D&D. By then I guess I was already a
dyed-in-the-wool GM, and ran tons of sessions.

My first experience of playing RPGs was with AD&D – I
had two characters, Meriosan the Giant Slayer, a paladin, and Oliosar the
Thief. An unlikely combo! We played the whole of the G-D-Q series, over the
course of maybe three months, including a snowbound Christmas. I had a blast
– and boy did we ever kill that
Lolth!

FATE SF:What kinds of RPGs do you enjoy the most? Are there
particular systems that you think play to your own tastes and interests as a
player and GM? Which ones?

SARAH: I like all kinds of stuff. For many years I GMed
RuneQuest almost exclusively—the Chaosium version, second and third edition—and
I still have a soft spot for Glorantha as a setting and the D100 system. About
10, 15 years ago, though, I found myself getting into a bit of a rut with my
GMing – I was overscripting scenarios, and getting frustrated when players went
“off story”. I didn’t realize myself what the problem was, until I discovered
the “new generation” of narrative RPGs, and HeroQuest (then Hero Wars) and FATE
games like Spirit of the Century and Starblazer Adventures some years after. Their
less rigid approach to plotting, their emphasis on saying “yes” to player
narration, and their use of really cool mechanics to cater for story-based
events, all absolutely revolutionized how I viewed RPGs.

These days, I love
sitting down to a table and having no idea how the session is going to
play out. I enjoy prepping games, but these days I take huge care to make sure
the players don’t feel constrained by a fixed plot, and that I have plenty of
support for winging it and coming up with events on the fly. I find that very
liberating, and I’m always open to new RPG mechanics these days, looking out
for the next revolutionary breakthrough. Sometimes it’s good to remind
ourselves that roleplaying is a relatively new hobby, and we’re just emerging
from the Model-T Ford, “you can have any color you like as long as it’s black”,
stage of our hobby. Huge amounts of cool stuff await!

But I also play a heckuva lot of FATE – I’d say that’s my go-to system these
days – and a very respectable amount of HeroQuest 2nd edition.

Recently I've also discovered Leagues of Adventure by Triple Ace Games, which
is the first Victorian era RPG I’ve really warmed to. It’s very Wells-ian, and
uses the Ubiquity system, which I’m finding very light, refreshing, and with
some very cool quirks and side effects.

FATE SF: I noticed on your Meme Machine blog that you
recently received a copy of RuneQuest 6. Now that you’ve had it for a few
weeks, what do you think of it?

SARAH: It’s awesome, it really is. I haven’t received
my hard copy yet, so I’m still reading the PDF and haven’t played it, but I
love what I’m seeing.

When RuneQuest was “reborn” a few years back under its
Mongoose incarnation, I was a bit disappointed to see that the rules system
hadn’t had the radical overhaul it really needed to incorporate all the cool
developments of the past ten years and the revolutionary breakthroughs which
the HeroQuest system had brought to Glorantha. Lawrence Whitaker, Pete Nash,
and friends have done a splendid job of bringing the rules into the 21st
century—there are all kinds of neat modern mechanics, providing for cool
tactical play as well as narrative features. I’m really looking forwards to
playing it.

FATE SF:How did you first get involved in playing and
writing for FATE?

SARAH: That’s all down to Mindjammer, my far future
transhuman space opera setting. I’d been thinking about the setting for a
couple of years, and had already put down some ideas for an RPG book. First I’d
been trying to use an updated version of FGU’s Space Opera rules, which I still
love; then I’d been trying to fit it to BRP, which would obviously make a
really cool science-fiction ruleset (I’m still a proud owner of the Ringworld
RPG, a thing of beauty!).

But neither ruleset really did what I wanted – I was
looking for something which could model the massive cultural conflicts of the
Mindjammer setting in a cool and action-packed way. I wanted players to be able
to play out the large scale conflicts between cultures, but also to play
individual characters – culture agents, if you will – performing missions which
would themselves affect, modify, and “attack” those big cultures. In other
words, a small scale (character) affecting a large scale (culture). Psy-ops,
that kind of thing.

Then, one day in late 2008, I stumbled upon Spirit of the Century
on DriveThru. Holy cow, I thought – this is an amazing system! If only
there was a scifi version!

And there it was – only in PDF at the time, but StarblazerAdventures, written by Chris Birch and published by Cubicle 7, contained
absolutely everything I needed. Not only a really inspiring piece of narrative
rules in the FATE system, but also a great extrapolation of the “FATE fractal”
into the scifi space, with characters, planets, starships, and organizations—I
had the solution to my “cultural conflict” question right there.

I contacted Chris and Angus at Cubicle 7 within a week of
grabbing Starblazer, and they were very interested in publishing Mindjammer as
a setting. Still the most amazing piece of synchronicity and serendipity, and it still
fills me with glee.

FATE SF: So let’s talk about Mindjammer. It is one of the
very few transhuman SF RPGs out there. How do you define transhumanism?

SARAH: I’m with Nietzsche on this one: “humankind is
something which must be overcome”. We’re a bunch of mad monkeys walking on the
moon, inventing virtual realities, fiddling with our genes, and generally doing
all kinds of incredible stuff in spite of our violent animal natures. We
have one hand with its knuckles dragging on the floor, red with blood, and
another reaching for the stars. It’s amazing we’ve got this far – and inspiring
that we continue to succeed. But it’s obvious that as a species we’re
transitional – already we’re starting to modify ourselves to be more fit for
purpose. We need better brains, better bodies, longer lives, if we’re really
going to fulfill the potential of the minds which evolution has seen fit to
gift us with. And I think it’s so cool to be actually aware of that
process.

So, transhumanism for me is a gift: it’s a mind-set which
allows us to responsibly and sensibly try to decide what kind of species we
want to become in the future, and then try and map out a path to get there. I
can’t think of a project facing humankind that’s more exciting – and it’s an
awesomely fruitful concept for roleplaying!

FATE SF: I have the first edition of Mindjammer, and I have been looking
forward to the second edition of the game. The cover art is quite astounding.
Is the second edition still coming out? What are your plans for it?

SARAH: Mindjammer second edition is definitely coming out –
I’m writing it as we speak! After Mindjammer first edition won the ENnie back
in 2010, Cubicle 7 wanted to release all the new supplements with new and
original artwork. This was a wonderful opportunity, but unfortunately it set
back the production schedule hugely, which was frustrating – and I’d like to
apologize to all the fans out there for the delays. In the meantime I was able
to release the Mindjammer novel, and also to playtest the adventures from the
Mindjammer Adventures supplement at GenCon last year, but as the delays mounted
I decided finally to take the setting “in-house”, so to speak.

So, this summer
I’m shortly going to be announcing the formation of “Mindjammer Press”, a new
imprint specifically dedicated to producing and publishing material, both RPG and
fiction, for the Mindjammer setting. It’s a very exciting venture—the first
publication is going to be a relaunch of the Mindjammer novel over the summer,
followed by Mindjammer second edition early in 2013, and then a steady release
of four supplements a year thereafter.

The new edition is going to be completely compatible with
the new FATE 3 Core, published by Evil Hat – that’s one of the reasons for the
timing right now, as the FATE Core is due for release very shortly. We’re in
talks with Evil Hat at the moment about whether to release Mindjammer 2nd
edition as a standalone game, or as a supplement to the FATE Core book, but whichever
we choose, the game itself will contain oodles of new material, including new
rules for starships, planets, cultures, organizations, and of course the
Mindscape. It will also contain loads of new setting material, maps,
technology, and more. 2013 looks to be a great year for Mindjammer!

FATE SF:While we’re at it, do you have a sense of what is
going on with Starblazer Adventures’ second edition, and supplements such as
The Planet Killers?

SARAH: Unfortunately not – my last contract with Cubicle 7
finished just after Christmas 2011, so I’m afraid I can’t shed any light on
their production schedules at the moment. I wrote the Starblazer 2nd
edition player’s guide a couple of years ago, and I believe it’s still in the
queue, but beyond that I can’t say. I look forwards to seeing the new edition
when it’s ready!

FATE SF:You also published a novel set in the world of Mindjammer.
Can you tell us a bit about the book?

SARAH: I’ve been absolutely delighted with how the
Mindjammer novel has been received – it’s been really inspiring to hear from
people who’ve read and enjoyed it. It’s a very action-packed tale, true to the
roleplaying setting in style and atmosphere, but at the same time it tries to
say something significant about what it means to be human—the essence of
transhumanism. It’s set in a cluster of worlds called Solenine, on the edge of
Commonality space—a “lost colony” which has recently been rediscovered by the
Commonality and is in the throes of tumultuous culture shock. The heroes are a
group of “culture agents” working for SCI Force—the Commonality’s Security and
Cultural Integrity Instrumentality—who stumble upon a conspiracy of
interstellar proportions. I won’t say any more, except to say that what they
find has implications not just for the Solenine Cluster but for the whole human
race – it’s transhuman space opera on a big scale!

I had a blast writing the novel – it was something which had
been fermenting in my mind for a couple of years. It’s the first of three
novels, forming a trilogy story arc—although you can read “Mindjammer” as a
standalone story, the second novel, “Transcendence”, which I’m writing at the
moment, continues the saga of the heroes of the first. That’s scheduled for
release in 2013, again by Mindjammer Press.

You can find out loads more about the novel and the setting
at www.mindjammer.com, including
snippets of me reading from chapter one, and sample chapters.

FATE SF:I noticed that the future interstellar setting of
Mindjammer includes government ministries called “Instrumentalities”. Was
Cordwainer Smith with his "The Instrumentalities of Mankind" an influence on the setting you created? A favorite author?

SARAH: Well-spotted! Cordwainer Smith is one of my all-time favorite
science-fiction authors, and the “instrumentalities” are a tip of the hat to
his genius. He’s a fascinating character – the “father” of modern psychological
warfare, a Christian, a profound scholar of Chinese culture, and a wonderfully
lyrical and imaginative writer of what we now call “science-fiction”.

Together
with Olaf Stapledon, to me he’s one of the few writers who really conveys just
how strange the future is going to be. Science-fiction shouldn’t be
about 21st century people in the far future, with 21st
century attitudes, behaviors, and ideas; it should be about what the people of
the far future are going to be like – what people are going to become,
to evolve into. We’re back to transhumanism again – and I’d consider
Cordwainer Smith to be one of transhumanism’s most poetic and inspirational
proponents. If anyone out there hasn’t read him, I strongly recommend his work!

Please come back on Monday for Part II of our interview with Sarah!

Here is contact information for Sarah Newton, as well as links for Mindjammer the RPG and the novel!

About Me

Last and First Men

"In your day you have learnt to calculate something of the magnitudes of space and time. But to grasp my theme in its true proportions, it is necessary to do more than calculate. It is necessary to brood upon these magnitudes, to draw out the mind toward them, to feel the littleness of your here and now, and of the moment of civilization you call history." - Olaf Stapledon